Swordsage/Master of the Nine build?

[Trickster]

I wish to make a swordsage/Master of the Nine build who also uses all nine legacy blades, how should I go about this?

[holbita]

You don't... even if you could have multiple legacy blades the stacking of penalties would make the character unplayable.

That being said... forget about a swordsage/Master of Nine, what you want is a Crusader/Unarmed Swordsage/Warblade/Master of Nine, you shouldn't go past more than 2 swordsage levels, hopefully at high enough level to pick the cool stuff, the recharge mechanic of the swordsage is awful, warblade or crusader would work much better for you, just learn your cool swordsage maneuvers as maneuvers from one of those classes with your master of nine levels, then you will be able to spam them nonstop using their recharge mechanic.

[Rebel7284]

Well as pointed out, such a character would be at a huge disadvantage. However, I suspect that with enough optimization, you could make it playable.
As a start, it looks like you would need to be a small or medium, good character with 5 BAB and a bunch of skills and 2x exotic weapon proficiency.
- Bad saves could be overcome with the save replacing maneuvers.
- Attack penalties could be partially overcome by making touch attacks or finding a way to boost your attack sky-high.
- HP loss can be at least partially overcome by HP optimization or making yourself immune to damage
- Using 9 weapons at once is also not terribly difficult with either the right shapeshifting magic or playing an anthropomorphic squid or something.

So with a ton of time and effort you could make something competent... but not GOOD. If that's what you want to play for the LOLZ, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you're aware that it will be overly complicated and not particularly powerful.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Anthropomorphic Squid is definitely the way to go here, with its eight arms. The problem is obviously that many legacy weapons are either one-handed or two-handed, giving ungodly penalties and even preventing you from multiweapon fighting in the first place. The solution is to have all of them grafted to your arms through the Illithid Graft "Weapon Graft". It's only 1000gp per weapon, though you obviously end up losing an arm. The last weapon can be a Mouthpick Weapon, which replaces your bite attack as a squid with the weapon attack. In the end, since all your attacks except for one are treated as natural weapons, you only need the Multiattack feat to greatly cut down on penalties. You also have no arm left, so consider taking another graft, or asking if you can graft two weapons on the same arm. You're now a combination of Octo and Zoro from One Piece, with eight weapons in your arms and one in your mouth.
Still, you need the five feats to enter Master of the Nine and two to qualify for the weapons of legacy in the first place, for a total of 8 required feats : Multiattack, Adaptive Style, Dodge, Blind-Fight, Improved Initiative, Improved Unarmed Strike, EWP (bastard sword), WF (scimitar). You'll have to take two levels of monk at one point, optimally as early as possible to grab three feats (Unarmed Strike, Improved Initiative, and one other feat that you want, probably Power Attack with the Wushu monk or Weapon Finesse with the Sleeping Tiger monk. If the DM allows it, Raging Monk from Dragon #310 is great, and comboes decently with taking a barbarian level later for Pounce, which you sorely need), slightly better saves and Evasion. Swordsage gives you Weapon Focus (Scimitar)

Your class levels (and corresponding feats) will then be
1 Anthrosquid 1/ Multiattack
2 Anthrosquid 2/
3 Level Adjustment
4 Raging Monk 1/ Unarmed Strike, Improved Initiative, Dodge
5 Raging Monk 2/ Weapon Finesse or Power Attack
6 Barbarian 1
7 Swordsage 1/ Blind-fight, WF (Scimitar)
8 Swordsage 2
9 Swordsage 3
10 Swordsage 4/ Adaptive Style
11 Master of the Nine 1
12 Master of the Nine 2
13 Master of the Nine 3/ EWP (Bastard Sword)
14 Master of the Nine 4
15 Master of the Nine 5

You'll need to manage your skills pretty well, and to put a lot of points in many stats (Con to balance the 114 HP penalty, Int to get the necessary skills, Wis to gain AC from Monk and Swordsage, Str to deal damage and maybe Dex to hide if necessary) so make sure your roll really well or ask your DM if you can have a bit more stats considering how much penalty your concept intrisically has.
Total penalties : -18 to hit, -114 HP, -30 Fort save (no, it's not a typo. Do not come closer than 5ft from poison, ever.), -10 Ref save, -6 Will save.


Your maneuvers will need to include at the very least Moment of Perfect Mind, Action before Thought and Mind over Body, since your saves will probably be in the negatives. The ability to cast Wraithstrike, be it because your DM allowed the arcane swordsage variant, or simply buying a (or several) Drow House Insignia of Wraithstrike (1/day Wraithstrike, swift action activation as per Rules Compendium) makes your attacks actually hit their target despite your monstrous penalty.

Now that it works (barely, you still need to reach ECL 13 before you can even use all the blades, and you still have ridiculously bad HP), let us optimize it.

At ECL 9, our initiator level is 6, and we have 9 level 3 and lower maneuvers and 2 stances from the Swordsage disciplines, of which we need one of each discipline.
My advice:
Desert Wind : Burning Blade (moar damage)
Diamond Mind : Moment of Perfect Mind, Action before Thought, Mind over Body (better saves)
Setting Sun : Counter Charge (low HP means you don't want to get charged)
Shadow Hand : Child of Shadow (stance), Island of Blades (stance), Cloak of Deception (Child of Shadow if everything goes south, Island of Blades to beat up your enemies, Cloak of Deception for high Dex enemies, and to take advantage of your legacy's sneak attack)
Stone Dragon : Mountain Hammer (DR is a pain in the a** when you're multiweapon fighting)
Tiger Claw : Claw at the Moon, Sudden Leap (More mobility is never bad)

At ECL 13, our initiator level is 9, and we have 2 level 5 maneuvers and 3 level 4 maneuvers from any discipline.
My advice:
White Raven : Leading the Charge, Covering Strike, White Raven Tactics, Battle Leader Charge (Leading the Charge mostly for the prerequisites, but also technically you are your own ally, and gaining bonus damage in a charge is great when you hit 10 times per charge, and MoN allows you to switch to a defensive stance if need be when you use a Counter, WRT is just overpowered, and Covering Strike is a good last resort if you need to get away from an opponent who could kill you with an AoO)
Iron Heart : Punishing Stance, Iron Heart Surge (punishing stance same as leading the charge, Iron Heart Surge especially useful if there is a pesky effect that your -30 to Fort let through, also consider Iron Heart endurance later)
Shadow Hand: Shadow Stride (walking is for peasants)

If Raging Monk is disallowed, then Barbarian cannot be chosen, and Pouncing Charge is all but required, probably replacing Battle Leader Charge. The Legacy abilities are always a nice bonus, giving you a few new maneuvers and defensive abilities, as well as bonus damage through sneak attack and Sting like a Bee.

You will always be short in swift actions, but that's inevitable in a build that draws from so many sources of power.

[Zancloufer]

As mentioned you probably want to main as a Warblade or Crusader instead of being a full Swordsage and Master of Nine. Something Like Human Swordsage 2/Crusader 3/Warblade 3, then go into Master of 9. Alternately Sword Sage 2~3/ Warblade or Crusader 5~6 works well to.

Either way you need at least 8 levels for feats/skill points and I would probably take your 2nd/3rd Swordsage level later on to pick up some higher level manoeuvres.

I Highly recommend against getting all Nine Legacy blades. Not only would it reduces your to-hit bonuses, HP and Fort saves to (practically) nothing, but the GP cost of all the rituals would practically bankrupt you. They cost about 50-55k each, which would put you back almost 500k of your ~750k WBL.

No really, the stacked penalties would render the character actually unplayable. Looking at some NPCs from one of my more stat intensive games it's not until epic levels/max HP that back line characters even have positive HP, you pretty much fail every Fort save and the attack penalty is enough to stop them from hitting anything.

[pabelfly]

A few comments:
- I'll agree with the previous posters that say the penalties will make it close to unplayable, and you're also going to be broke
- It's going to be incredibly slow rolling each attack with each individual weapon since they all have their own to-hit penalties, damage rolls and damage bonuses. That's going to get boring for you and everyone else quite quickly.
- Using different weapon types on the same build is usually not advisable in 3e. The bonuses you get to attack and damage with feats are usually really tightly-targeted to one or maybe a few specific weapon types. It's better to find one weapon type you like and focus on getting bonuses that apply to every use of that weapon type
- If you decide to go with a multiweapon fighting build, nearly all of the Tome of Battle strikes are going to be about using one or two weapons to calculate damage. Multiweapon fighting builds are better off finding a preferred method of Pounce or an equivalent, and building around that.

Now that's done, it might be helpful to get some context to the build before writing the concept off entirely. Are you getting any specific bonuses that have inspired this build? Are there any houserules that have inspired this?

[Trickster]

Now that's done, it might be helpful to get some context to the build before writing the concept off entirely. Are you getting any specific bonuses that have inspired this build? Are there any houserules that have inspired this?

I was reading thought the Nine swords book (Which after seeing all of this, I'm most gonna have to go back and read through all the way). The concept itself was inspired by the original Master of the Nine in the lore. One man wielding 9 powerful weapons, using each with skill surpassing those that spent lifetimes training. But I wasn't aware that I had to become a One Piece fusion character.

[Maxrim]

If you don't necessarily want to wield all 9 blades at once, you could take the Pathfinder Brawler to get IUS and Martial Flexibility, so that you can specialize for the weapon you're wielding with temporary feats. I imagine it'll be easier on the feat taxes, that way, it might come together better than a multiweapon fighting build, and you wouldn't have to take Anthropomorphic Squid. If you do want to multiweapon fight, but without the Squid, you could rely on a Wand or a party member casting Girallon's Blessing on you a bunch of times. Each casting of the 3rd level spell gives 2 arms for at least 50 minutes, it's available to Sorc/Wis, Druid, or Cleric.

[Darg]

I was reading thought the Nine swords book (Which after seeing all of this, I'm most gonna have to go back and read through all the way). The concept itself was inspired by the original Master of the Nine in the lore. One man wielding 9 powerful weapons, using each with skill surpassing those that spent lifetimes training. But I wasn't aware that I had to become a One Piece fusion character.

A warblade's weapon aptitude ability would allow you to wield each of them separately, but only paying the cost of one. The way the ability is worded it would allow you to swap the designated weapon of any legacy feats you have. It does not swap the feats out and thus only the original prerequisite must be met. So you'd be able to use the abilities of each weapon with only a 1 hour training session in between.

Not exactly an "at the same time" kind of thing, but it is a reasonable approach to it without destroying your character or the balance of the game.